


A Part of Them

by daisyqiaolianmay (skinman)



Series: The Parts That Make A Whole [1]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 05:25:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4552314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/skinman/pseuds/daisyqiaolianmay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Skye considers what she is to May and Coulson, what they are to her, and what they are to each other...</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Part of Them

Skye missed out on a lot growing up. There were things she’d never had the chance to do, or to learn. She could take down armed men, fire an automatic pistol, and hotwire a car, but she couldn’t ride a bike. She’d never learned. She’d taught herself the essentials; how to tie her shoes, cook a meal, and wash her clothes. All the things that moms and dads taught their kids.

Skye tried not think about it most of the time, and most of the time it didn’t matter. Everyone at the playground saw her as competent, a trained agent. When Hunter had assumed she’d been to The Academy her feelings had turned to some weird concoction of pride, embarrassment and shame. She was proud that he saw her to be as well-trained as any new agent fresh out the Academy… and embarrassed that she had to say ‘No’ because of the shame she felt knowing that she had taken the short-cut. She’d spent her life cutting corners, this had been one thing she had wanted to do the right way.

Sometimes Coulson would tell stories, when it was just the two of them, about The Academy, about what it was like back then, about what May was like. The way he spoke about it, about those days, it made Skye wish she could be a part of something like that. Sometimes when she saw Coulson and May together, when Coulson cracked a joke and May rolled her eyes and smiled, Skye wished she could be a part of something like that, a friendship like theirs. Truthfully, she’d begun to wonder whether friendship was all it was.

Late at night when the Playground was quiet and soft snores emanated from the bunks Skye would creep down to the aircraft hangar to sit and look at the Bus.

She used to think her van was home, but it had taken the Bus to show her what home really was. It wasn’t just your own space, it wasn’t just where you felt safe, it was where you could the trust the people who cared about you would always be. Ward had ruined that for her, taken her first truly safe little piece of the world and turned it into a lie.

Except she had to remember, it wasn’t all a lie; not Jemma’s eager hugs, not the laughs she’d shared with Fitz, not the pride in Coulson’s eyes, and not the small smiles that formed on May’s face when she thought Skye wasn’t looking.

They were her family.

There had been moments before she knew who she was and where she’d come from, before she knew about Daisy Johnson. There were moments where she’d looked at May and Coulson together and wondered against extreme improbability, and the _‘it could never be’_ sthat caught in her mind, if maybe… just maybe…

When she found out it was a Shield agent that had left her with the nuns her mind had raced, disbelieving, hoping against hope.

May was so quiet, guarded, it had felt like she was keeping secrets, and she had been, but Skye wasn’t one of them. How poetic would it have been if after over 20 years of her searching for them Skye’s parents had been the ones to stumble across her? Sometimes Skye liked to pretend that was how it had played out in reality; that they were her birth parents, and the disappointment, and anger, and terrible hurt, she felt for how things had turned out with Cal and Jiaying was all a terrible nightmare. That she would wake up from it and go sit on the end of May’s bed and tell her mother all about it. Skye berated herself; it was a silly fantasy.

Silly it might be, but it was still so easy for Skye to imagine. The way that May and Coulson treated her, it made it easy to envision she was theirs. She even looked like them. When she’d wondered if they were them, her parents, what seemed now to be so long ago, she’d started seeking out similarities; the ways she was like them. Her ‘mother’s’ dark colouring and her ‘father’s’ jawline. The curve of his nose and shape of her eyes reflected in Skye’s face. Even though Skye knew the truth now it didn’t stop her trying to see herself in them.

Simmons and Fitz, they were something different, true friends, as close to her heart as siblings, but they had families, other homes to go back to one day. Skye didn’t have that. She’d been thinking on it one day and realised, Coulson didn’t have that either. An only child, parents gone, no siblings… no one. And May, she had a mother but from what Skye’d heard they weren’t very close, and that was it, no one else. Andrew and May, they’d never got round to having kids. Something Coulson had said a while back made Skye think that maybe they’d wanted them. That May had wanted to be a mother… before…

It made sense that she’d never considered it an option after Bahrain.

It was almost a shame… she would have been a good Mom. _‘She is a good mom.’_ Skye couldn’t help but think.

A draft of cool air broke her train of thought. The floor of the hanger was cold as ice. Skye was dressed in a loose t-shirt and pyjama pants, arms wrapped around herself in an attempt to keep warm, toes curling. She missed her bed but she didn’t want to move, not yet. The shape of the Bus was almost black and featureless in the dim light, but there was still so much it led her to consider.

Skye didn’t hear May approach, suddenly the woman was settling down beside her.

“Couldn’t sleep?” Skye asked, her eyes still trailing the shape of the Bus’s nose, the windows of May’s cockpit. Memories swam in her mind; evenings spent curling up in the co-pilot’s seat when silent company and a great view was all that she had needed.

May hummed quietly, a ‘Yes’, eyes ahead, “You?”

Skye tucked her legs in closer, “Some nights I come down here.”

The older woman stayed silent.

Skye spoke again, her voice smaller this time, “I don’t want to forget.” Forget what they’d had, who they’d been, back when no one was a traitor and everything had been simpler.

May looked at her, expressions were hard to make out in the dark, but Skye could swear May looked almost heartbroken.

She pursed her lips, “Okay. Then I won’t let you.” She didn’t promise but Skye knew the words were sincere.

They stayed there a while longer, remembering.

“Come on.” May suggested finally, giving Skye’s shoulder a light squeeze and climbing to her feet. “I’m going to make something to help us sleep.”

The kitchen looked large, cold and uninviting in the dark but May didn’t let it stay that way for long. She put Skye in charge of boiling water as she left to go collect something from her room.

Skye stood there over the steaming pot. She tried to imagine she was kid making hot drinks with her mom in the middle of the night after a nightmare, knowing that once she put her back to bed she’d be safe a warm and nothing else would be able to touch her.

When May returned it wasn’t alone. Coulson’s expression was taut, a shadow beneath his eyes and a dent between his brows that disappeared when he saw Skye. Another someone who couldn’t sleep tonight. With a nod and a thin smile he came to sit on the stool beside her, arm to arm. He always looked so tired these days, though he tried to hide it, tried to pretend he hadn’t had the weight of the world dropped on his shoulders.

May handed Skye a jumper and a pair of warm socks.

“Don’t try and pretend you weren’t freezing out there.” May challenged the girl.

Skye smiled sheepishly, putting the items on. She’d locked her bunk door behind her out of force of habit when she’d left, these weren’t her clothes. The jumper was a bit too big, it smelled a little like shoe polish, dusty filing cabinets and… Phil. The socks fitted her but were dark purple and had a grey Chinese character on the ankle. Melinda’s.

May dug a tea strainer out one of the draws and a clear sandwich bag full of what looked like dried tea out her pocket.

Skye frowned, focusing on the bag as May tipped a portion into the strainer and made to pour the boiled water.

“Valerian root and Arborvitae seed.” Coulson answered her unspoken question. “Family recipe.”

“So keep it to yourself.” May said in a tone that was meant to be stern, her back still to them. Skye had come to easily recognize when May was being sincere and when she was not. Her tone was too calm, not even near being threatening.

“She used to make it after long days at the academy to help with sleep.” Phil began.

Skye’d ears pricked up, waiting for him to continue the story.

“Sometimes she’d let other people have a cup. Eventually she was getting requests for it all the time…” Phil sighed at the memory, “so she started selling the stuff.”

Skye grinned, “Alright, so how much for Melinda May’s super-secret knock-out potion?”

“Phil…” May began.

“$2.60. Extortionate price, well… back then anyway.” Phil gave Skye a smug smiled, “I used to be able to weasel it out of her for half a dollar though.”

May gave Phil a pointed look and placed two mugs down in front of them, “My Baba always told me that if I was good at something never to do it for free.”

“I remember the first time you made it. September 1981.”

 May raised a brow and the corner of her mouth quirked humorously, “You forgot your own birthday three years in a row but all these years you remembered the first time I made this?”

“It was exactly a week after we first met.” Phil silenced her with his words, ignoring her comment.

May brought her mug to her mouth, sipping as he continued.

Skye didn’t move, afraid to jog Coulson in case it distracted him and he didn’t tell the end of the story. She might have felt as if she were intruding… except that she didn't; the way they sat was like they were totally aware of her. It was like… she was part of this too. Their relationship had always been to her something undecipherable, Skye’d never been sure where they stood with each other. Old friends? …maybe something more? one upon a time, before Skye'd even been a thought, a possibility. What was clear was that in some way they loved each other, and had done so for a long time. This truth was apparent to anyone that was really looking. This truth was one reason Skye had wondered about them concerning her own origins. It was sacred in a way, in the world in which they worked there was so much hatred, and they were choosing to share this precious element of their lives with her.

“A Tuesday. I know because we always had sparring on Tuesday mornings and you had to take me to the infirmary that day because you knocked me out.”

“I did not.” May seemed mildly scandalised at the suggestion, “I _got_ you knocked out.”

Skye laughed out loud, and May and Coulson turned to her. There was pride in May’s eyes, the spark was small but Skye could see it, like she was glad she’d made Skye laugh.

For someone that smiled so much Skye rarely actually laughed.

It wasn’t hard to see, the way they looked at her in that moment made it clear, she was part of them now. She didn’t quite know it yet, she wasn’t quite sure of it, but it was true all the same.

 _‘So this…’_ Skye brought the mug to her lips, thinking back to all those nights she’d laid awake in her bed at the orphanage wondering, _‘This is what it’s like.’_

 

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__please follow me at[coulsonskids](http://www.coulsonskids.tumblr.com/) on tumblr! i'm taking prompts_ _

 

__(and you can find the story of how May got Coulson knocked out in my other story The Living Years)_ _

 

 

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